STATEMENT ON WORK​​The notion of home can be a complex site of memory, against which one gauges a sense of place. In light of increased migration, controlled and forced travel, Gwenessa Lam's works consider how the image of the home functions when one is dislocated. For some, the idea of home is reclaimed or transformed with new surroundings; for others it is a lost and distant place. Informed by these observations, Lam's work explores domestic and historical spaces as sites of collective memory, and by extension, the psychological and social implications when they are disrupted. ​

GWENESSA LAM is a visual artist and educator. Her artwork stems from interests in perception and the compression of time and memory within images. Lam received her BFA from the University of British Columbia and MFA from New York University. She has taught at New York University, Emily Carr University of Art and Design, the University of British Columbia. She has attended residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Skowhegan, MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the Banff Centre. Her work has been exhibited at the Bronx Museum of Art , the Queens Museum of Art in New York, Galerie de L'UQAM, and Republic Gallery in Vancouver. Lam is currently on faculty at the Alberta College of Art and Design. GWENESSALAM.COM

The Publisher of The Rusty Toque is offering a six-week online short fiction workshop starting in January 2019.

DESCRIPTIONIn this six-week online course, award-winning writer, editor, publisher, and creative writing instructor Kathryn Mockler will lead you through the process of idea generation, drafting, and revising a short story. Each week you will receive writing prompts and readings, and you will participate in the fiction workshop.

Format: This course is live and will take place online through video conferencing. This is a workshop-based course where you will share your short story with the class and receive constructive feedback on it from the instructor and the workshop participants.

The Rusty Toque would like to acknowledge the sacred land on which we operate. It has been a site of human activity for 15,000 years. This land is the territory of the Huron-Wendat and Petun First Nations, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River. The territory was the subject of the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement between the Iroquois Confederacy and Confederacy of the Ojibwe and allied nations to peaceably share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes. Today, the meeting place of Toronto is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island, and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work in the community, on this territory.